Books at JSTOR: An Interview with Bruce Heterick

In August 2012, Marilyn Geller interviewed Bruce Heterick, vice president at ITHAKA, which includes JSTOR and Portico. Heterick discusses the addition of e-books to the JSTOR platform (Books at JSTOR), the impact of e-books on academic library services, and the future of e-books in the realm of scholarly communications.     

Prek?re Einkommenslagen in Deutschland. Ein Ost-West-Vergleich 1996–2002

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag untersucht die Verteilung der ?quivalenzgewichteten Nettoeinkommen von Haushalten und Lebensgemeinschaften in West- und Ostdeutschland für die Zeit von 1996 bis 2002 auf der Grundlage der Daten des Mikrozensus. Die Untersuchung gliedert sich in einen deskriptiven Teil, der eindimensionale Ma?e zur Einkommensverteilung und zur Messung der Ungleichheit diskutiert, und in einen zweiten Teil, in dem auf der Basis eines Logit-Modells Determinanten bestimmt werden, die für prek?re Lebens- und Einkommenslagen urs?chlich sein k?nnen. Ein besonderes Gewicht wird hierbei auf unterschiedliche Lebensformen und die Anzahl der Kinder gelegt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen ein deutlich h?heres Armutsrisiko für Lebensgemeinschaften/Familien mit Kindern im Vergleich zu kinderlosen Paaren.     

A future agenda for research on climate change and human mobility

In the past 15 years, research activities focusing on the interlinkages between climate change and human mobility have intensified. At the same time, an increasing number of actors and processes have sought to address human mobility in the context of climate change from a policy perspective. Hitherto, research has been limited in terms of geographical preferences as well as conceptual and methodological focus areas. This paper argues that to address the evolving policy space, future research on climate change in the context of human mobility needs to become more differentiated, integrated and generalized. This includes concerted efforts to better integrate researchers from the global South, improved cross-linkages between different datasets, approaches and disciplines, more longitudinal and comparative studies and development of innovative qualitative and quantitative methods.     

Linking power and inequality in global value chains

There is increasing interest in the study of globalization on whether the emergence and consolidation of global value chains (GVCs) have exacerbated inequalities within and across nations and/or how GVCs may be leveraged to mitigate them. Although power asymmetries have been identified as a central factor shaping (un)successful GVC participation, dominant discourses still disregard the links between power and inequality or use these concepts interchangeably. In this article, we provide an analytical approach to GVC-related inequalities (within, along and through value chains) and examine how they may co-evolve with different types of power (bargaining, demonstrative, institutional and constitutive). We apply this approach to the case study of the hake value chain in South Africa to illustrate how existing inequalities are manifested, challenged, mitigated or exacerbated—and draw an agenda for future research.     

Testing for a break in persistence under long-range dependencies and mean shifts

We show that the CUSUM-squared based test for a change in persistence by Leybourne et al. (J Time Ser Anal 28:408–433, 2007) is not robust against shifts in the mean. A mean shift leads to serious size distortions. Therefore, adjusted critical values are needed when it is known that the data generating process has a mean shift. These are given for the case of one mean break. Response curves for the critical values are derived and a Monte Carlo study showing the size and power properties under this general de-trending is given.     

The Influence of Biostatistics at the National Heart,Lung, and Blood Institute

Since the early 1950s, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHBLI) has conducted a long series of influential randomized clinical trials in heart, lung, and blood diseases. The biostatisticians at the Institute have been central to the design, conduct, monitoring, and final analyses of these trials. The uniquely favorable deck of cards the group of biostatisticians at the Institute has been dealt over the six and half decades of the group's life has led to contributions that have had a major impact on the fields of biostatistics and clinical trials. The leaders of the NHLBI and its several Divisions have valued the independence, creativity, and collaborative interactions of statisticians within the Institute. The medical problems the Institute faced impelled the statisticians to develop methodology that would address questions of great public importance. Perhaps most importantly, the individual members of the group had a collective vision passed from member to member over time that new methodology must fit the questions being asked. The group has always had the technical ability to develop new methods and the conviction that they were responsible for ensuring that they could explain their methods to the clinicians with whom they worked.     

Venture capital and risk perception

This study extends the current state of research on venture capital (VC) determinants by introducing a behavioral perspective. We focus on individuals’ risk perception and connect it to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions of individualism and uncertainty avoidance. Individualism is related to overoptimism and uncertainty avoidance is related to overcaution, and hence affect the perception of risk. In a cross-country empirical analysis with 49 countries, we find that individualism is positively associated with VC activity, whereas uncertainty avoidance is negatively associated with VC activity. Our results are robust to controlling for other determinants as well as using other proxies of VC activity, other time periods, and subsamples of countries.